


Outnumbered

by gnimaerd



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-12
Updated: 2014-04-12
Packaged: 2018-01-19 03:14:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1453351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnimaerd/pseuds/gnimaerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p> <em>Who run the world? Girls.</em> Or - the one where Oliver surrenders control of the foundry ‘cause the patriarchy has nothing on the women in his life. (Not so much AU as it is set slightly in the future?).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Outnumbered

By the time Oliver realises he’s been outnumbered, it’s too late.

Thea, Laurel, Sara, Sin and Felicity have taken over the back half of the Foundry and are progressively filling it with… stuff he would not ordinarily choose to have in his cave.

The first thing he finds is Laurel’s coffee maker. It’s better than their usual one so he doesn’t protest – even though it comes with a steadily growing collection of mugs, which she brings down and then forgets about, most of which have rabbits on them.

(Laurel likes rabbits.)

Then there’s the trail of makeup, nail polish, cleansing wipes, hairspray and jewelry that is the hallmark of Thea’s presence in pretty much any area she occupies on a regular basis. He starts finding her earings by the coffee maker, a ring of hers gets wedged under one of his mats, and she leaves used wipes everywhere, smeared with mascara and foundation and for some unknown reason glitter. He doesn’t ask what she’s using glitter for, but it’s irritating because that also gets _everywhere._ One of his bows sparkles for the rest of the week.

Then he comes down one day and finds Laurel sprawled on a sofa reading case notes. Which is weird because there has never been a sofa in the Foundry before.

“…seriously, Laurel?”

“You have something against soft furnishings?” She arches an eyebrow at him.

Oliver Queen can take down three men on his own in a fight but he’s got absolutely nothing to counter Laurel’s eyebrows, so he only mutters something about how she should really ask him next time she buys furniture for the place and shuffles away.

It turns out the sofa is the first part of a three piece suit that comes with a coffee table, which Laurel sourced off craig’s list. The rest turns up the following morning and Diggle and Roy are probably wise not to argue when Laurel has them carry everything downstairs for her.

She also buys a set of throw pillows – with rabbits on them.

“I think it’s nice,” Felicity tells Oliver, that afternoon, as Laurel is consulting Sara about whether they should also go buy a rug and maybe some blankets for when they have to pull all-nighters, “now we’ve got somewhere to sit.”

“…don’t you have a chair?”

“Yeah – but, I work there. At my desk.”

  
Which is apparently not the same thing as sitting.

But what really happens is what Oliver suspects is going to happen, which is that they all sit back there – Sara, Laurel, Thea, Sin and Felicity – on the sofa, whilst he’s working out, and they drink coffee, and they giggle. It’s disconcerting.

(Well, Sin doesn’t giggle. She swigs coffee and smirks. But it amounts to the same thing.)

“I can hear you back there, you know.” He is half way up the salmon and he is almost certain that the subject of the half-muted conversation going on at his back is his sexual history.

“Yeah, you love it,” Sara jeers, “work them abs, Ollie.”

“Best show in town!” Laurel agrees.

Thea makes a disgusted sound. “Could you two, like, objectify my brother a tiny bit less? I’ve taken baths with that guy.”

“Is his chest sparkling?” Felicity’s tone suggests she’s most likely on her third cup of coffee for the day (Oliver has learned to guage her exact caffeine dosage by the pitch of her voice and the number of times per minute that she adjusts her glasses). “Oliver, why is your chest sparkling?”

“Believe me, I wish I knew.”

“I think it might be my hair spray,” Thea sounds apologetic, “it’s got glitter in it.”  
  


“Why?!” Oliver huffs, coming to rest on the second rung from the top of the salmon, “why in gods name does a hairspray need glitter in it? And why is it everywhere?!”

“It kind of just gets everywhere – glitter’s like that,” Thea sounds less apologetic, “and the reason why hairspray needs glitter in it, Ollie, is because glitter makes everything certifiably more awesome.”

“Yeah, it’s doing wonders for your chest,” Sara adds, “really – highlights the whole – nipple – region.”

Laurel and Felicity collapse laughing, Thea groans.

“Sara!”

“Sorry, Thea.”

“You’re so gross.”

“Would you rather we objectify Roy?”

“Um, yeah, cause then I can join in.”

“Roy! Roy, get out here! Bring the gun show!”

“Oh my god there’s more of them than there are of us,” Roy sounds faintly alarmed as Oliver finally gives up the workout for the day.

“You only just noticed that?”

“Well… Felicity’s always been here and Sin’s – Sin, so I wasn’t – really counting them – but – yeah. There’s like… there’s a lot of girls in here.”

The place is starting to smell very faintly of Laurel’s perfume, and since she’s now making Sara wash her hair regularly, it also smells like some kind of citrus herbal essences thing. And coffee.

Also there’s now a porcelain rabbit on the coffee table.

“He’s lucky,” Laurel informs Oliver, sharply. “Dad gave him to me the first time I got straight As on a report card.”

“It’s a him?”

Laurel looks like she might throw the rabbit at his head so he stops.

“Dad used to bring me monkeys,” Sara adds. “Mom got cats.”

“I think it’s cute,” Felicity opines, from her desk. She’s brought down a collection of Russian nesting dolls and is arranging them around her computer.

The crowd in the Foundry gets really inconvenient when Oliver finds he has to schedule time to work out because of the amount of room being taken up by the extra bodies. Sara is insisting on teaching Thea, Laurel and Felicity basic self-defense – and it’s not that Oliver in any way objects to this notion, but he would really, really like to be left enough room to get through his morning cardio circuits in peace, damnit.

“Now,” Sara has lined up her little class on the mats, and is using a distinctly nervous looking Roy to demonstrate on, “first things first, you gotta remember to SING – ”

“Sinus, instep, nose, groin,” Laurel reels off, and, at Sara’s look, shrugs. “I watched _Miss Congeniality_ too, Sara.”

“Oh, so would you like to teach Felicity and Thea how to throw a guy over their heads or do you wanna leave that to the woman who used to belong to a top secret criminal organisation specialising in assasination?” Sara folds her arms.

Roy looks even more nervous. “Throw?”

“Relax, Roy.”

“Just promise you won’t touch his face,” Thea puts in, “I like him pretty.”

“Thanks, Thea.”  
  


“You’re welcome, babe.”

“Roy,” Sara holds up a hand, “I need you to come at me from behind.”

“If I do, are you gonna break my arms?”

“What are you, scared?”

“ _Yes_.”

“I promise no one’s arms are getting broken today.”

Oliver watches Sara throw Roy around the mats for a while and then goes to the gym, where it’s quieter.

Felicity buys a white board and puts a little grid on it, to allow them all to schedule time on the mats.

“Thea, can you at least use that hairspray in the bathroom rather than – anywhere near any of my stuff?” Oliver rounds on her when, some days later, he discovers the Arrow’s hood is twinkling.

“I swear to God that wasn’t me,” Thea prods the hood, “I’m pretty sure Sin and Roy have hairspray fights with it when I’m not here.”

“Who has hairspray fights?”

“I don’t know – they’re weird sometimes.” Thea shrugs and Oliver is left wondering how the hell to get glitter off leather without damaging it.

(Laurel knows, of course, takes the hood from him with a faintly exasperated sigh and returns it an hour later looking pristine and smelling of something he can’t identify. It’s not unpleasant, though. Like her perfume).

It’s Sin who brings a bag of glow stars and goes scrambling up into the Foundry’s ceiling amongst metal struts and light fittings, to stick them there. How the hell she got up so high by herself, Oliver has no idea – and he is not in any way going to admit to being impressed.

“Sin – is that – really necessary?” He asks, folding his arms.

“Shut up! I’m in the middle of making Orion and this shit is complicated, okay?”

“You need to put another one a bit to the left,” Thea is lying on the floor with a book of constellations, directing Sin’s movements.

“Here?”

“Left a bit – your other left – ”

Oliver leaves them to it.

Not long after that, there is the edition of two dance dance resolution mats and before he knows it, Thursday is dance off night and Sara and Laurel are neck and neck in a competition that, he vaguely remembers, has been going on since they were children. Sara has better reflexes now, but Laurel has the iron determination of an older sibling who has never given the younger one the satisfaction of beating her.

Roy sets up a betting pool.

By the time the fairy lights arrive, wrapped around the bars of the mezzanine level where Oliver and Sara sometimes sleep, hanging in ropes from the ceiling, he’s officially surrendered any notion that he has any say in the Foundry’s interior decoration.

“Technically, you never did,” Felicity tells him, in a tone that is probably meant to be comforting, “I’m the one who designed this place.”

She pats him. He sighs.

“It just used to be… quieter,” he tells Diggle, in a somewhat pathetic attempt to articulate why he’s feeling so wrong-footed.

“Oh, quit whining,” Diggle shakes his head, “it actually looks like somewhere decent civilised human beings hang out now – Laurel’s done you a favour.”

Oliver can’t really argue with that.

One night, he and Sara come back to the foundry, and find his sister, Laurel and Felicity huddled together on the sofa, sharing the vintage patchwork quilt that Laurel bought the week before, all of them asleep. It’s late – early, really, gone three in the morning. Laurel’s still in the very lawyer-y pants suit she was wearing when she arrived that afternoon, straight from work, but she’s taken off her shoes, so that her feet, in matching rabbit-print socks, are hanging over one arm of the sofa, her head in Felicity’s lap. And Thea is pressed to her other side, and Felicity has dosed off with her glasses clasped in one hand, Thea’s wrist in the other.

Roy is face down on the floor next to the sofa, like a felled tree, snoring.

It’s dark, except for the fairy lights, and the glow stars.

And it occurs to Oliver that some of the most important people in the world to him are safe here, have made his cave their home.

“Oh that’s super cute,” Sara tip-toes past him, pulling off her mask and wig. “Come on, Ollie. Shower then bed. They’ll be fine.”

Oliver nods, watching the way Thea stirs and then settles again, nestling against Felicity’s shoulder.

Sara gently prods Laurel awake enough to pull her feet around into a more tenable position, then fiddles around under the sofa to pull the bed part out (Oliver didn’t even know the damn thing was a pull-out bed).

“There you go, sis,” Sara pats her, gently, “you’re okay.”

Thea doesn’t even wake up, sprawling contentedly, throwing one leg out exactly the way she did when she was a baby, like a starfish. Felicity sits up briefly, puts her glasses in one of Laurel’s shoes for safe keeping, and then flops down between Oliver’s ex and his sister as if she does this every night.

Sara throws a blanket over Roy and then heads towards the showers.

Oliver will go after her, in a minute – but for a moment he sits down on the nearest chair – the arm chair, with it’s rabbit throw pillow – and watches Laurel and Felicity and Thea sleep.

He doesn’t mean to dose off, but what feels like moments later someone is gently pushing his hood off his face, and he realises that Felicity is pressing a mug of Laurel’s coffee into his hands.

“You’re still all grease-painty,” she tells him, touching his jaw – and then hastily withdrawing her hand as Thea pops up next to his chair with a handful of cleansing wipes.

“I can do it,” she doesn’t wait for permission, dabbing at him expertly whilst Felicity rolls up one of his sleeves to check a cut acquired the night before.

He’s stiff and aching but too tired to resist the indignity of being fussed over.

“What up, bitches,” Sin announces herself a minute or so later, carrying a bag of something that smells good, “I got bacon rolls, egg rolls, sausage – you guys got ketchup?”

Oliver looks round and sees Laurel not far behind, in that same suit, a little rumpled looking, more food tucked under one arm. “You know we need to get a cooker down here, and a fridge,” she tells him. “It’ll save a lot of money in the long run if we can just make our own food. Bacon?”

“Yes,” He would reach but he’s still holding his coffee with one hand and Felicity is busily disinfecting the wound on his other arm.

Laurel gives him a sympathetic smile and puts a warm, greasy, awesome-smelling little paper bundle in his lap before handing out rolls to Sara and Diggle.

“You could have woken me up,” he tells Sara, as she unwraps her breakfast

She only grins. “You looked so peaceful.”

Thea has used three wipes getting the grease paint off his face, “gross. Okay, you’re good. You know you shouldn’t sleep in that stuff – it’s probably worse for your skin than foundation is and you are never meant to sleep in foundation.”

“Great advice, sis.”

“You’ll be thanking me when you’re in your forties and haven’t developed crows’ feet.”

Felicity wraps up his wounds – that, at least hasn’t changed, the ritual of her taking care of him feels almost sacred, these days; good luck. Laurel puts music on Felicity’s computer, and Roy sweeps Thea up and dances with her and Thea laughs: a bright, warm, happy sound.

The following week, Laurel buys a fridge and a stove, and a washing machine, and Oliver comes in to find her and Roy hanging up laundry, pegging out Roy’s socks, shirts and underwear on a line strung along the back wall, the smell of soap and fabric conditioner heavy on the air.

“Roy has to use a laundrette – I figure this way is just safer,” Laurel tells him, “saves anyone spotting when he has blood on his clothes.”

Saves Roy a lot of money, too, Oliver thinks, but he doesn’t say so – Roy’s pride can take concern for his security better than concern for his poverty.

Instead, Oliver seats himself in the armchair he increasingly thinks of as his, and asks whether he should help cook dinner that evening. He can’t make toast without burning it, so most of the catering is getting done by Laurel and Diggle at the moment – but he suspects he should at least offer.

Laurel has him slice vegetables for her so she can make everyone soup.

“We should get an actual table,” Oliver remarks, as he scrapes diced onions into a pot, and meets Laurel’s raised eyebrows steadily, “so we’re not all eating off our laps.”

“Oh god, seriously,” Felicity is at his elbow, Laurel’s designated stir-er for the stock she’s making, “Roy keeps eating at my desk – he leaves crumbs all over my keyboard, it’s driving me insane.”

“Dining set, check,” Laurel nods, “I’ll add it to the list.”

By the time Helena Bertellini resurfaces, out of prison and with nowhere else to go, it takes her surprise to remind Oliver of how much the Foundry has changed.

“Exactly how many girlfriends have you got down here?” She demands.

“Oh, like, three,” Thea saunters past in pajamas, “I’ll tell Laurel we’re gonna need another pull-out bed, shall I?”

“Or we could shuffle everyone around again and Helena can go in Roy’s hammock,” Felicity adds. “You could share with Roy and I’ll share with Laurel?”

Helena has no interest in sleeping in a hammock, however, so Laurel gets her a daybed from Ikea. More throw pillows, although these ones don’t have rabbits on them. Helena just wants everything in varying shades of purple.

“Six women,” Roy runs a hand over his face, “two to one, man.”

“Yeah, six women, making your meals, doing your laundry,” Diggle pokes him, “boohoo.”

“It’s home,” Oliver declares, sat at his newly acquired dining set, “not the most conventional but – home. I like it.”

He even kinda likes the damn glitter – not that he’s going to tell Thea that.  


End file.
